like Plato, to crown and then exile the poets; for the true poets are ambassadors of God on earth and those who cast them forth deserve no blessing from heaven. The great Greek initiator and he who civilised it first was also its first poet, for even in allowing that Orpheus was a mystical or fabulous personality, we must believe in the existence of Musæus and attribute to him the verses which pass under the name of his master.[56] It matters little to us otherwise whether one of the Argonauts was called Orpheus or not, for the poetic creator has done more than live; he lives in immortality for ever. The Orphic fable is a complete dogma, a revelation of priestly destinies, a new ideal form of the worship of beauty. The regeneration and redemption of love are indicated already therein. Orpheus descends into hell, seeking Eurydice and must bring her back without seeing her; so must the pure man create his companion, raise her to himself by devotion and not by desire of her. It is in renouncing the object of passion that we deserve to possess the object of true love. We are already in the atmosphere of the pure dreams of Christian chivalry. But the hierophant is still a man; he falters, questions and looks. _Ab miseror Eurydicem._ She is lost, the error is committed, the expiation must now begin. Orpheus is widowed and remains as such in purity; the marriage with Eurydice had not attained consummation, and as the widower of one who was a virgin he rested himself in virginity. The poet is not two-hearted and children of the race of gods love once and once alone. Paternal inspirations, yearnings for an ideal which shall be found beyond the tomb, widowhood made holy in its consecration to the sacred muse. What a revelation in advance of inspirations yet to come. Orpheus, bearing in his heart a wound that nothing but death shall heal, becomes a doctor of souls and bodies; he dies at length, the victim of his chastity—the death which he suffers is that of initiators and prophets. He perishes proclaiming the unity of god and the unity also of love: this at a later period was the root of the Orphic Mysteries. Having shewn himself raised so far above his own epoch, Orpheus earned in due course the reputation of a sorcerer and enchanter. To him, as to Solomon, were attributed the knowledge of simples and minerals, of celestial medicine and the philosophical stone. With these he was doubtless acquainted, since he personifies primitive initiation, fall and reparation in his legend—the three divisions of the great work of humanity.